As a six-metre high blimp of a blond-haired baby in a nappy rose above Parliament Square in London on Friday, a casual observer might have been forgiven for imagining they had witnessed an inflatable Boris Johnson. After all, the former foreign secretary had not been seen in public since his resignation last week and, judging by social media, he is about as popular with voters (and presumably Theresa May) as the visiting American president.
The blimp’s “babysitters” were targeting Donald Trump, but many of their complaints are equally valid against Johnson. Both men indulge in infantile petulance, self-obsession at everyone else’s expense and a fondness for dog-whistle pronouncements on Brexit, race and women. No wonder the Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, briefly came out of hiding to brand them the “terrible twins”.
Before Trump’s election to the White House, Johnson (still in his liberal phase as London mayor) described him as “unfit” to hold the office of president. Having now recast himself as a Brexit ultra, he sees his lookalike as a natural ally in the relentless drive to the far reaches of the alt-right, so the two are locked in a bromance exchange of ever-more exalted compliments.
Johnson gushes that he is “increasingly admiring” of Trump, who would be better at batting for Britain at Brexit; Trump hails his “friend” Johnson as having “got what it takes” to make a “great prime minister”. “Take that, Mrs May!” they probably both said – perhaps to each other if last week’s suggested Trump-Johnson meeting took place – but in less polite terms.
There is no reason to suppose that Johnson really believes in Trump-style supernationalism – or indeed anything else beyond his own destructive desire for power for power’s sake. After all, Johnson himself once joked that he had absolutely no convictions – except one, and that was from a long time ago, for speeding. But it is seen as his current meal ticket in his perpetual craving for attention until another one comes along.
And so it is a fair bet that it was Trump’s love of signing executive orders before the cameras at his desk in the Oval Office that inspired Monday’s unprecedented photo call for Johnson’s resignation letter (which was full of emotive words such as “colony” and “surrender” and an untruth about the EU blocking laws to cut cycling deaths). While an emergency government meeting was called to discuss the appalling murder of a British mother on British soil by the actions of foreign agents, Johnson was entirely off the grid. He was too busy posing at a desk holding a pen and affecting what he presumably hoped was a Churchillian stance.
He did not find time, however, to sign another document that would have provided the British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with diplomatic immunity, thus leaving the young mother once again to languish in jail (her sentence already lengthened by Johnson’s false words that she had been training journalists in Tehran). And he left a number of foreign ministers sitting around in vain for him at a security conference in London on the western Balkans, which he was supposed to have chaired. “We’re still waiting for our host,” Germany’s incredulous Europe minister complained.
No wonder Theresa May cancelled his security detail and official car with immediate effect – after all, Johnson had spent the weekend leaking to friendly newspapers the notion that he had described her painstaking Brexit proposal (one he had signed and even toasted) as a “turd”. That was classic Johnson. A frequent ploy over his years in public life when he has wanted to attract or deflect attention has been to spout pithy words – when mayor, the fact that he’d been caught lying to a Commons select committee, for instance, wasconveniently buried under coverage of his potty-mouthed outburst to the committee chair.
More recently, he proved his strongman Brexit credentials with the ultras by spouting “fuck business” at a reception to honour the Queen, in response to warnings by BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, Airbus, Siemens and a host of other major employers and taxpayers that his and others’ actions might force them to withdraw from the UK. Yet again it diverted attention from the seriousness of the message – that hundreds of thousands of people may be about to lose their livelihoods and the Treasury the ability to fund the NHS – to Johnson himself.
Much of the media has long been too indulgent of the blond bombshell of British politics, consistently overlooking his failure to come up with an alternative workable Brexit plan rather than just swearing randomly and emoting about “dreams”. Look closely at his stint as foreign secretary, however, and it was not only the manner of his departure that lacked honour. Several European ministers despised his lying ways so much they refused to be in the same room as him. Such distaste for our envoy-in-chief has reduced our standing abroad at a crucial time and led to a number of humiliating rejections.
In America, outside Trump circles, he is also seen as a dangerous joke. The New York Times carried a headline last week about him leaving the government that screamed: Good Riddance. Meanwhile, the attorney general of Anguilla, the Caribbean island visited reluctantly by Johnson following last year’s devastating hurricanes, proclaimed him the “worst foreign secretary we’ve ever had”, who was “out of his depth … and cared nothing for our situation”.
It was a crushing indictment in a week when Britain lost not one but two foreign secretaries – the other being the diplomatic Lord Carrington, who died aged 99 and is now best known for his resignation following the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands in 1982 on the honourable principle that the top man should take the rap.
The contrast is dazzling; the disillusion epic. In the days after the 2016 referendum, Foreign Office mandarins welcomed Johnson into their George Gilbert Scott palace on King Charles Street. He was an energetic contrast to his lugubrious predecessor, Philip Hammond, and knew from his time as a Brussels correspondent how the EU worked.
Hope swiftly turned to irritation and finally fury, however, as their political master failed to read his briefs, stay on message or do much that did not in some way advance his personal profile at the expense of his country’s. Last Monday night the champagne is said to have flowed on what has now been dubbed “liberation day” – joyful that they will no longer be reduced to clearing up the offence, confusion and despair that Johnson repeatedlyleft in his wake.
Diplomats are rarely if ever undiplomatic in public. So it fell to a retired Foreign Office grandee, Simon Fraser, to voice a common view with the rhetorical question: “When will Boris Johnson and fellow Brexit ultras understand – or admit – that if we are heading for vassal state or colony status (their words) it is 100% their own doing.”
To work with Johnson is often to go off him – as any number of former colleagues from politics and the media will testify. Many of his fellow MPs have learned to be wary of his lack of loyalty, honesty or attention to detail. Ask Michael Gove for the truth on why he abandoned his support for Johnson’s leadership campaign after the EU referendum and the answer might disturb you. Many newer MPs, according to recent polls, have already decided to stay clear, even if some party members remain enamoured.
But the most surprising figure to express his distaste publicly is Johnson’s former spin doctor when he was London mayor, Guto Harri. Once ferocious in his dealings on behalf of Johnson, last week he turned his guns on his old boss, describing him as “much diminished in terms of integrity, in terms of political courage and in terms of credibility”. He went on to admit: “I used to think he would be fantastic at No 10 but those days look a long time ago” before calling on Johnson for the sake of his country to “give up on politics” altogether.
And if Johnson is thrown out of his grace-and-favour house at Carlton Terrace to find his home in Islington still rented out, he may not even be able to rely on his sister Rachel (a keen Remainer) to provide a bed after several reports of family divisions over Johnson’s stance on Brexit.
Rachel’s Europhile husband, Ivo Dawnay, is even retweeting commentators describing Brexiters as “beyond reason” or calling for a full police inquiry into allegations of electoral malpractice against Vote Leave, the campaign in which his brother-in-law was heavily involved.
None of this seems to have made Johnson happy. Gareth Southgate is much loved because he stuck to decency and hard work, even if in the end he did not win the great prize. Johnson is also now unlikely ever to reach his goal, but he has in the process surrendered any claim to affection, respect or trust.
Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition, by Sonia Purnell (Aurum Press)
